


hunters

by lycanthus (timedilations)



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25336000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timedilations/pseuds/lycanthus
Summary: CONTENT WARNING: VIOLENCE, BLOOD, GORE, ABUSE MENToriginal characters in a blame-like setting.





	hunters

**Author's Note:**

> short piece, part of a series... for my ocs!

**He steadies himself** against the elevator’s rail, one hand on metal, the other pressing a cigarette to his lips. He takes a drag, exhales, and before he knows it the cig’s out of his hand, caught in a flash between the fingers of his twin sister, long and slender but covered in calluses obtained from years of metalworking. She drops it and crushes it against the heel of her boot. 

“You still smoking this bullshit? This brand ain’t even good.”

A scoff followed by a shrug, nonchalance. 

“Cheapest brand they got in this day and age. You’re paying me for that later.”

“Fat chance.”

But she’s already turned away, sticking her head outside the open carriage, air from the numerous vents pushing auburn-red— unruly and untamed —back and forth around her face. She’s tired, dark circles running deep below her eyes. Above them, the vast expanse of space laced with power lines and wires, zigzagging across the chasm like clothesline, distant lights dotting the walls as if someone took all the sky and placed them, one by one, onto a canvas of metal and rust. 

Below them, abyssal darkness. Light consumed by shadow for each inch they descend. Occasionally there’s a noise— the sound of a distant structure collapsing, beeping self-automated systems re-initiating routines —but mostly there is only the sound of a vast hollowness, like pressing your ear to an empty container. That’s all it really is anyway— the tower. Just one big empty container.

Before long, the elevator stops with a mechanical creak.

“Ray,” she says, tossing him his jacket. “Two class E silicons. Bring back the heads intact. And for that… we’ll get, maybe three hundred, four?”

“Fucking prices dropping like flies now that everyone and their mom’s trying to be a hunter.” 

He puts the jacket on, the smell of newly-refurbished synthetic leather filling his lungs. Underneath, clasped to his belt, a serrated spike about two feet long, thrumming with latent energy. When he takes it in his hand, he swings it once against the open air, sending a surge of electricity running through its core. He knows the striker like the back of his palm— an extension of his own body for all the times he’s slain silicon with the black edge of its blade. Behind him, his sister primes her particle gun— an obnoxious and large piece of weaponry slung over her shoulder at all times, half held together by a makeshift combination of soldering and duct tape. As old as it is, second-hand and worn, sometimes Ray still thinks she cares more about it than she does him.

“Are you quite done with that?” A hint of sarcasm.

“Say what you want, but if some monster tries to bite your dick off I’m not covering you.”

“Like I need your help anyway.”

He’s already walking out of the carriage by the time she opens her mouth to quip back, stammering a quiet curse as she hoists her gun back over her shoulder. Click. She unholsters another, smaller one from her waist. Click. A precision laser sweeps across the darkness, connected to the barrel of her pistol. Click. Something creaks a few feet to the side of her, barrel swinging back towards the sound—  _ Click. _

And then there was light. 

Ray stands there, latex-gloved hand holding open a switch box. “Careful where you point that thing.”

She lowers her gun and looks around. In the tower lies a vast network of spiralling tunnels, artificial caves, bridges to nowhere— a labyrinthine chaos mired in wire and metal where dilapidated structures fall apart and the builders continue to build in a mad, uncontrolled frenzy. A never-ending maze. Home to the silicon. In other words, their hunting grounds. 

This cove is no different from the rest. The remaining functional lights sputter on and off between the cables overhead. On the ground, piles of junk, most of it salvageable but so common and inexpensive it’d be a waste of time and energy. Ray moves forward first, striker drawn, kicking a discarded pipe away. He moves with a purpose, each step careful and deliberate between the wires tangled over the floor. Rey follows suit, finger ready on the trigger. 

Silicon life. Two class E types— relatively harmless with little intellect, more akin to snarling beasts than creatures made of synthetic fiber and flesh. They’ve dispatched about seventy of them before, brought back their parts to be recycled for industrial use, got paid and went about their days counting pennies between paychecks. Ray always said they needed to go after bigger prey— class D, class C even —but it’s all hubris speaking. A couple of ex-restauranteurs turned independent hunters like them working out of their shoddy mom-and-pop shop in the metropolis, holding their own against goliath-class silicon? Practically suicide. No matter how long they lived— fifty years, seventy, a hundred, she stopped counting —death was still as cheap as ever. One wrong move was all it took.

Then again, maybe she would’ve said yes a long, long time ago. Once bold and brash, she thought she could take on the entire world with her own two bloody fists. But that was decades ago. Time changes things. 

At any rate, all the good jobs got snatched up by the guild.

Something scatters across the floor. She is the first to notice, barrel swinging and laser pointed. There’s a groan, miserable, inhuman, sickeningly wet— with black sclera bulging out of vinyl skulls all too white.

Ray clicks his tongue. “Bingo.”

It moves first. It’s faster than either of them on its sixteen spindle-like legs, one head spitting acid while the other shrieks like a baby. She dodges, aims two shots at its torso—  _ bang bang _ —in quick succession. One lands with a disgusting squelch and a scream emits from one head’s frothing mouth— the other misses. It jumps. It’s in the air now, spreading its legs apart to reveal rows and rows of needles for teeth. She realizes belatedly it’s going to land on her.  _ Quick. Take it out. _

Before she can pull the trigger, a flash of electricity sears the creature in half. Each part falls to the side. Standing there is Ray, striker charged, clothes reeking of synthetic blood. He wipes the black fluid off his cheek, groaning. “I  _ just  _ got this jacket washed. Fuck.”

“Shut up and stop complaining,” she says, leaning down over the still-twitching corpse with a mild look of disgust. “You idiot, you sawed one of these heads in half. Now we gotta look for another.”

“That’s a funny way to say ‘gosh Ray, thanks for saving my pretty face from being mauled by a giant spider.’”

“Glad to know you think I’m pretty.”

The usual quip and retort, all in a day’s work. It didn’t matter how much they insulted eachother when, at the end of the day, they shared the same paycheck split fifty-fifty. Words are cheap against lifetimes spent clawing your way up by the skin of your teeth. This, they understood on an intuitive level. Trust no one. Only eachother. For who else would understand the weight of the world against you? Who else knew the feeling of your own mother’s hands wrapped around your throat?

The cove opens up into a cavern of old, defunct technology as wires turn into vine-like canopies tangled across the ceiling. Ray looks up, pointing his flashlight, only to watch its luminescence disappear into an impenetrable darkness. The junk piles around them only get bigger and rustier the further in they go. She clicks her tongue.

“Keith said he spotted at least two or three fuckers roaming around these parts last time he came. Think they moved on already?”

“That was a day ago. Can’t be. Unless his info’s shitty.”

But both of them know Keith’s intel is about as good as it gets for an apprentice hunter. Almost prodigious skill as a scout. He’s nothing if not reliable. The only answer is to keep on going. 

Or not.

Something strikes Ray from the darkness. She smells blood— human blood —as it pours from the newly-opened gash in his shoulder. He barely has time to mouth a warning before something drops from the ceiling.

“ _ run _ ” 

It’s heavy. It lands with a solid clank against the metal floor. And when her eyes refocus on the figure in front of her, she realizes it’s  _ bipedal _ . Pure black with an outer carapace shining against the light of her gun, an insectoid jawline and mandibles razor sharp. On impulse, she fires a shot— and hears it ricochet off its shell. This manages to get its attention, large body turning, turning— 

“Rey, fucking  _ run! _ ”

Like hell she’s going to listen to him.

Its claws are still deep in his skin when it turns to face her. It’s lifting him up and _ it hurts _ . Prideful idiot he is, no sound of pain escapes him— all she can hear is him clawing desperately at its arm, striker completely useless against its metallic skin. He can poke all he damn wants and it won’t get him anywhere when it’s a two foot sword versus a ten foot wall of exoskeleton. The first time they’ve seen a class C silicon alive, easily fetching twenty thousand, maybe fifty— but she isn’t thinking about that. She isn’t thinking much at all. Instinct takes over, backing up, pulling the trigger again and again, each shot landing and bouncing off its armor like a springboard. Another two steps back as its lumbering form follows her with infuriating nonchalance. Bullets are useless.

And just as suddenly as it came, another strike of the claw. She dodges backwards, just barely catching her footing as its arm passes inches beside her head. It swings again and she drops to her feet, making distance between herself and the monster— but she can’t do this forever. Ray’s bleeding, and bullets can only distract for so long. Without hesitation, the cannon comes off its strap, barrel pointed up at the creature’s face. 

It takes three seconds to fire the first shot, to charge and blast through the motherfucker’s armor. All she needs is three seconds. 

The thing is, a lot can happen in three seconds.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  


You don’t forget the year you’re born no matter how much time has passed, even less so when your sibling shares your exact birthdate. It was a winter in the year 2095, and from what you heard from your neighbors it was an especially cold one. Too cold for the wooden shantytowns and plastic-covered windows of the slum you grew up in. Even in the earliest years of your life, you could distinctly recall the biting chill seeping into the corners of your shared bedroom no matter how much your mother tried to tape the cracks over. And even though you’d always known life was hard, it was only until after you got out of that shithole that you realized just  _ how  _ hard ‘hard’ was. 

Your mother was not a kind woman. To say she was moraless and pure evil (as you once thought) was overkill— and sometimes in the fractured light of some of your better memories, you might make out the picture of a woman trapped by circumstance —but there was no love in this household. She was as physical as she was verbal, as angry as she was drunk. Her rage most likely fueled by the fact you and your brother took too much after your deadbeat father— a spineless coward of a man who ran away, afraid of commitment, and consequently turned to drugs, drug-selling, then finally twenty-five years of incarceration on cocaine possession charges. In the few precious years before that though, you remember him with a mix of bitter fondness and second-hand regret. He was rarely around— his visits sparked intense arguments with your mother —but when he was, he was kind. He brought candy, the occasional toy, and held you and your brother close to his chest, as if to perpetuate the lie that yes, he did want you after all. No, daddy’s not staying just yet. Just give me time.

Then, one day, he stopped coming. You were probably seven or eight. 

Your father left your family with a debt your unemployed mother couldn’t afford, so she drank. She drank and went on unprompted tirades about her now ex-husband, walking into your room with unsteady feet, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other. You have your father’s hair, she said. I hate looking at you. I can’t believe I made spawn with that disgusting, pathetic man. Different iterations of the same sentiment. You’d long since grown used to it, shrugging off her words like bullets against armor, but that was you.

Your brother faired worse.

It became clear at some point that your mother was a vehement misandrist after what your father did to her. Ray, by consequence, suffered for it. Sometimes you’d come home to the sound of him crying out, head pulled up above a sink full of water, and your legs would rush into action, arms yanking your mother away from from while he fell to his knees onto the dirty linoleum. At some point you weren’t sure if he was gasping or sobbing. You didn’t have the chance to check because at that point, it was your turn, your mother’s hands on your neck, cold, nails digging into your skin. You’d fight back, break free, push her to the ground, and take your brother’s hand, dragging him up off the floor and out the door— into the winter, forgetting your shoes and coats behind —but it didn’t matter. Anywhere was warmer than this.

There was an abandoned warehouse you went to when home was unbearable. All the countless times you held his hand, coaxed him up the ladder towards the roof where you hid some stolen blankets and pillows fished out from the junkyard, all the moments spent in silence as you waited for night to fall. The slum wasn’t a pretty place to look at even from a bird’s eye view, but as the sun dipped below the horizon the endless patchwork of grey buildings would sink into darkness. There were no stars anymore— pollution made sure of that —but from your private perch you could see the windows of every building for miles— each lit and flickering, like candles in vigil. You would stretch your hand out towards the distance, looking forward, pointing towards the furthest wall lined with orange lights. A barrier between your present and your future. You steadied your gaze, fixed on that point far beyond your reach, and made a promise. We’re going to make it out there some day. I know it.

That was nearly two centuries ago.   
  
  


* * *

Rey hears the sound of flesh ripping. It is a quiet sound, like cutting into a piece of memory foam, but the grating bone was unmistakable. It takes her several moments to process what takes place in front of her: first, the sound of Ray’s boots making contact with carapace ( _ stupid piece of shit look at me _ ) then the sound of something wet and snarling, and finally a sickening thud hitting the floor. 

It had bitten his arm off. Whatever was left lay motionless below his feet. 

All in the span of three seconds.

Rey fires the cannon.  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
